Books in 2015: the essential literary calendar

New novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, Jonathan Franzen and Toni Morrison; film versions of Suite Française and Alan Bennett’s Lady in the Van; the 150th birthdays of Alice in Wonderland and WB Yeats – we look forward to the literary treats of 2015

The film version of Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van, directed by NIcholas Hytner (2015). Photograph: Allstar/BBC Films

January

5 Costa prize category winners announced – best novel, first novel, biography, poetry collection and children’s book. The writer who will follow The Shock of the Fall author Nathan Filer as overall winner will be revealed on 27 January.

12 Winner of TS Eliot poetry prize (with value increased to £20,000) announced a week after the 50th anniversary of Eliot’s death in 1965.

16 UK release of Wild, adapted by Nick Hornby from Cheryl Strayed’s book about her 1,100-mile hike of self-discovery down the Pacific coast of the United States.

23 UK release of Ex Machina, SF thriller written and directed by Alex Garland of The Beach fame.

24 50th anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill, who was a Nobel literature laureate.

30 UK release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, the first screen version of a Thomas Pynchon novel.

FictionLurid & Cute by Adam Thirlwell (Jonathan Cape). An ordinary man wakes up and finds himself plunged into a Technicolor world of crime, revenge and lust in a characteristically playful novel from the author of Politics and The Escape.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper (Fig Tree). In her keenly anticipated debut, Canadian writer and musician Hooper heads for the wide open spaces of Saskatchewan to tell the tale of an elderly woman who decides to walk 2,000 miles to see the ocean for the very first time.

An Untamed State by Roxane Gay (Corsair). The Bad Feminist author’s debut novel, about a Haitian woman at the mercy of her kidnappers, gets a UK release.

10:04 by Ben Lerner (Granta). A follow-up to the acclaimed Leaving the Atocha Station, about love and literature in a New York under threat.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (Doubleday). The Gone Girl title-a-likes just keep coming – but the toxic relationship this girl has with alcohol marks out an impressive thriller debut.

PoetryOne Thousand Things Worth Knowing by Paul Muldoon(Faber). The sense of a generation moving up infuses Muldoon’s 12th collection, which opens with a long poem dedicated to the memory of Seamus Heaney.

Non-fictionChasing the Scream by Johann Hari (Bloomsbury). The controversial Hari, repentant plagiarist, enters the drugs debate with a look at the past 100 years of prohibition.

Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Canongate). A harrowing account of over a decade of incarceration without charge, by a detainee still in the Cuban prison.

Quite a Good Time to be Born: A Memoir: 1935-1975 by David Lodge (Harvill Secker). The author of Changing Places and Nice Work charts the momentous social developments that unfolded during the first half of his life.

February

13 Valentine’s Day eve UK release for film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson.

17 National Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, starring Ralph Fiennes, starts its run.

21 Jewish Book Week begins.

FictionThe Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan (Faber). The story of an officer in the Royal Western Fusiliers, returning to Scotland from a tour of Afghanistan, is interwoven with his grandmother’s early life as a pioneer of British documentary photography.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (Chatto). The celebrated author of The Accidental Tourist and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is back with a Baltimore-set novel about generations of the Whitshank family.

The First Bad Man by Miranda July (Canongate). “Never has a novel spoken so deeply to my sexuality, my spirituality, my secret self,” says Lena Dunham. The first novel by July, the cult writer, film-maker and artist, tackles motherhood, ageing and the need to be loved.

Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (Headline). “Short fictions and disturbances” from the all-conquering fantasy writer, in which the old gods clash with the new in modern America.

Second Life by SJ Watson (Doubleday). Follow-up to memory-loss smash Before I Go to Sleep is a psychological thriller featuring a woman leading a double life.

We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler (Bloomsbury). A “pirate story for grownups”, about a teenage girl causing mayhem in San Francisco bay, from the author more commonly known as Lemony Snicket.

Nobody Is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey (Granta). A young American walks away from her life and pitches up in New Zealand, in an unnerving debut that has made a splash in the US.

PoetryIn Poems(Little, Brown), Iain Banks’s friend and collaborator Ken MacLeod collects their verse according to the late writer’s wishes.

Disinformation by Frances Leviston (Picador). Eagerly awaited follow-up to her 2007 debut Public Dream, from one of our highly regarded younger poets.

Kim Kardashian’s Marriage by Sam Riviere (Faber). Second collection from the winner of 2012’s Forward prize for best debut.

Non-fictionSo You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (Picador). When his online identity was stolen, Ronson rapidly rooted out the culprits. But it prompted this meditation on the exponential growth in the power of contemporary public shaming, not least in social media.

The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the New Sunni Revolution by Patrick Cockburn (Verso). The award-winning foreign correspondent traces the rapid strengthening of the jihadi movement.

Leaving Before the Rains Comeby Alexandra Fuller (Penguin). A sequel to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller’s memoir of her childhood in Rhodesia, this time revisiting her tempestuous 20-year marriage.

Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano by Dana Thomas (Allen Lane). The world of high fashion viewed through the stories of two of its most dominant figures in recent years.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev (Faber). A riveting account of the creation of Putin’s Russia.

To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science by Steven Weinberg (Allen Lane). A history of science from the Nobel prize-winning theoretical physicist.

FictionThe Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro(Faber). His first novel since Never Let Me Go a decade ago is a striking departure, set in a mythical post-Roman England where memories of Arthur are fading and Britons and Saxons live in uneasy peace.

Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker). After last year’s Boyhood Island, Knausgaard’s autobiography-fiction hybrid arrives at the threshold of adult life, as the 18-year-old narrator finds himself teaching in a remote fishing village and beginning to write short stories.

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (Cape). A narrator known only as U who works as a “corporate anthropologist”, a dizzying proliferation of information and a spiral of narratives usher us in to the avant-garde world of McCarthy, author of Man Booker-shortlisted C.

I Am Radar by Reif Larsen (Vintage). Larsen follows his picaresque debut The Selected Works of TS Spivet, which was shortlisted for the Guardian first book award, with a globetrotting epic about a boy with mysterious origins.

A Decent Ride by Irvine Welsh (Cape). It’s another outing for “Juice Terry”, the lusty taxi driver whom we first encountered in Glue – and who now finds himself with an ailing libido. Can a burgeoning love of golf help? Probably not.

The End of the Storyby Lydia Davis(Hamish Hamilton). A reissue of the acclaimed short-story writer’s only novel, first published in 1994: the fragmentary tale of a failed love affair that an unnamed narrator is struggling to turn into a novel.

The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer (Faber). This hotly tipped debut centres on an eight-year-old girl who goes missing at a festival, and her mother’s attempts to find her.

The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain (Yale). First English-language translation for an exuberant novel set in a graveyard and told entirely in the voices of the dead, which has been described as the most important prose work in modern Irish.

Get in Trouble by Kelly Link (Canongate). Short stories from one of the most interesting fantastical writers around.

PoetryMulti-award winning Sean O’Brien returns with The Beautiful Librarians (Picador) featuring “infantrymen, wrestlers, old lushes in the hotel bar – but none more heroic than the librarians of the title”.

Non-fictionOne of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad(Virago). The author of The Bookseller of Kabul explores the events surrounding the massacre of 2011, and their effect on Norwegian society.

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton). Journeys through Britain, with an emphasis on how language has captured the natural world.

Visitants by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton). Twenty years of travel writing, from Cuba to Croatia and Syria to South Sudan.

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy (Random House). LA Times reporter Leovy has been embedded with LA’s homicide department for a decade. This is the story of America’s worst homicide epidemic; Martin Amis has already called it “exceptional”.

April

14–16 London Book Fair. After China, Turkey and Korea, this year’s market focus will be on Mexico.

23 100th anniversary of death of Rupert Brooke from the infection of a mosquito bite received en route to Gallipoli.

23 Poetry is added to this year’s World Book Night, and the anthology Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy – featuring TS Eliot, Philip Larkin, Edwin Morgan and the Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska – is one of 20 books being given away to readers by writers including Roddy Doyle, David Almond, Rachel Joyce, Lynda La Plante and Elif Shafak.

24 200th anniversary of birth of Anthony Trollope, author of 47 novels and the man who introduced the pillar box to the British postal system.

FictionGod Help the Child by Toni Morrison (Chatto & Windus). A new novel from the Nobel laureate exploring the way childhood trauma reverberates into adulthood.

Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals by Jesse Armstrong(Cape). The debut novel from the co-writer of TV comedies Peep Show and The Thick of It takes us back to 1994, and a group of idealistic youngsters who set off for Bosnia to try to stop the war.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (Atlantic). The latest from SF’s brainiest author is set 30,000 years in the future, after a meteorite storm has rendered the earth’s surface uninhabitable.

The Field of the Cloth of Gold by Magnus Mills (Bloomsbury). A parable of power, stasis and change from the author of The Restraint of Beasts.

Pleasantville by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail). Revisiting the territory of Locke’s Orange prize-shortlisted Black Water Rising, Pleasantville focuses on the case of a missing girl during a contentious mayoral campaign.

The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall (Faber). A woman returns to the Lake District as part of a project to reintroduce wolves to the landscape in a novel about wilderness and personal transformation.

The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (Faber). The Nobel prize-winner weaves a tale of two men, each heroic in his own way – one the victim of blackmail, the other determined to avenge himself on his useless sons. Previous Vargas Llosa characters make an appearance.

PoetrySentenced to Life by Clive James (Picador). Since Jamesannounced he is in the latter stages of a terminal illness he has produced a series of heart-rending yet clear-eyed poems looking back over his life and considering his situation.

May

19 Sixth winner of biennial Man Booker International prize announced. Judges chaired by Marina Warner will name a successor to Lydia Davis, who won in 2013.

21 Hay festival begins (to 31).

FictionA God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday). This companion volume to Atkinson’s 2013 novel Life After Life, about the many lives of Ursula Todd, focuses on the fortunes of her younger brother Teddy, RAF pilot and would-be poet.

Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray). The final novel in his historical trilogy covers colonial government in India.

Quicksand by Steve Toltz (Sceptre). Fate, faith and friendship are the subjects of this follow-up to Toltz’s turbo-charged 2008 success, A Fraction of the Whole.

The Art of Flying by Antonio Altarriba (Cape). This graphic novel based around the suicide of the author’s father was a huge success in Spain.

The Green Road by Anne Enright (Cape). The author of The Gathering explores family life once again, this time centring on the Madigans, a County Clare clan that scatters to the four corners of the globe before coming back together again.

June

10 100th anniversary of birth of Saul Bellow: “In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.”

13 150th anniversary of birth of WB Yeats: “Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”

FictionI Saw A Man by Owen Sheers(Faber). After the death of his wife, Michael Turner moves to London and befriends the family next door, who represent much of what he has lost. But disaster is not far away …

Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville (Macmillan). New stories from the master of the New Weird.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume(Picador). In her first adult novel for 16 years, based on her own childhood, the revered writer for children and young adults tells the story of a community reeling in the wake of a series of freak plane accidents.

Love + Hate by Hanif Kureishi (Faber). Short fiction and essays including a long piece of reportage about the conman who stole Kureishi’s life savings.

PoetryJohn Ashberycontinues his close inspection of the pleasures and absurdities of the everyday world in Breezeway(Carcanet).

The Remainsby Annie Freud (Picador). The blending of images and poetry in Sung Dynasty works on paper inspired this collection, which Freud has illustrated herself.

July

31 JK Rowling turns 50, having very possibly published a new book as usual in July.

FictionThe Mark and the Void by Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton). From the author of Skippy Dies comes the tale of a Frenchman marooned in Dublin who meets an author who wants to put him in a book. The author’s name? Paul Murray …

Non-fictionZero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano (Allen Lane). A meticulous examination, in the form of a “non-fiction novel”, of the international cocaine trade and its consequences, by the author of the bestselling Gomorrah.

The Black Mirror: 35 Meditations on Mortality by Raymond Tallis (Atlantic). The philosopher and former Professor of Geriatric Medicine contemplates the failing mind, being remembered and being mourned.

August

15 Edinburgh international literary festival starts (to 31 August)

FictionTwo Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie (Cape). Add it up and you’ll realise that it comes to 1,001 nights: this new short novel is inspired by ancient traditions of storytelling.

The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah (Faber). Zimbabwean-born Gappah’s short-story collection An Elegy for Easterly won the Guardian first book award in 2009; her debut novel focuses on a woman convicted of murder telling her story from a Harare prison cell.

Noonday by Pat Barker (Hamish Hamilton). The trilogy about a group of characters in the London Blitz that began with 2007’s Life Class.

PoetryWaiting for the Past by Les Murray (Carcanet). Long-awaited new collection that draws on Australian topography and language in its exploration of those things – old-fashioned typewriters, unlikely saints, farming in the spirit of ancestors – that have been lost in the modern world.

Non-fictionPostcapitalism: A Guide to our Future by Paul Mason (Penguin). Where we go next, from Channel 4’s economics editor.

The Battle of the Atlantic by Jonathan Dimbleby (Viking). The most destructive naval campaign in all history – and the one that ultimately determined the outcome of the second world war.

A Farewell to Ice by Christopher Wadhams (Allen Lane). A professor of oceanography on the importance of ice to our planet, in a year in which the north pole is likely to be ice-free for the first time in history.

Electric Shock: How Popular Music Made the Modern World by Peter Doggett (Bodley Head). The story of pop, from the birth of recording in the 1890s to the digital age.

September

15 Man Booker shortlist announced

FictionPurity by Jonathan Franzen(Fourth Estate). A young woman called Pip tries to untangle the mystery of her family, suggesting a Dickensian twist to the latest of Franzen’s dissections of contemporary America.

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood (Bloomsbury). Atwood follows her MaddAddam trilogy with this near-future tale of haves and have-nots, in which a poor young couple sign up for a social experiment – with tempestuous consequences.

Merciless Gods by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic). Love, sex, death, family, betrayal and more in a new collection of short stories from the author of The Slap.

Bream Gives Me Hiccups by Jesse Eisenberg (Grove Press). Short stories – one is in the voice of a nine-year-old child watching a divorce, one is set in pre-eruption Pompeii – from the star of The Social Network.

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions). The fourth and final instalment of Ferrante’s spellbinding Neapolitan series, in which a female friendship is painstakingly charted over time.

Sweet Caress by William Boyd(Bloomsbury). With his Bond duties performed, Boyd returns to the panoramic novel, this time animating the 20th century through the eyes of ambitious female photographer Amory Clay.

New Bond novelby Anthony Horowitz (Orion). But 007 just won’t die: this new hommage from Horowitz, who also writes Sherlock Holmes novels, will be based on unseen material by Ian Fleming.

Arcadia by Iain Pears(Faber). The future starts here: Pears’s tale of the imagined worlds of spy turned academic and writer Henry Lytten will be published as both a trad book and an interactive app, the better to showcase its time-slipping narrative.

City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg (Cape). It’s a debut novel. It’s 900 pages. His US publishing deal was worth $2million and he’s sold the film rights to Scott Rudin. Can you afford not to read this novel of race and class in 1970s New York?

Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball 1973 by Haruki Murakami(Harvill Secker). New translations of the Japanese author’s first and second novels.

The Past by Tessa Hadley (Cape). A new novel from the much-respected author of Clever Girl, The Master Bedroom and other books.

Non-fictionThe Blue Touch Paper by David Hare(Faber). The acclaimed playwright and director’s memoir, taking us from his childhood to the moment that Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979.

Black Earth by Timothy Snyder (Bodley Head). Snyder’s groundbreaking Bloodlands told the “what” of the Holocaust; now he moves to the “why”.

The Face of Britain: A History of the Nation Through its Portraits by Simon Schama (Viking). From the Tudors to the present through portraits. Accompanies a major BBC TV series.

Universal by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (Allen Lane). How to think like a physicist.

Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist by Niall Ferguson (Allen Lane). First part of a major new biography that examines the controversial statesman and the era he dominated.

Memoirby Elvis Costello (Viking). The story of the 40-year career of the pop icon and Attractions frontman, which began with the single “Less Than Zero” in 1977.

Deep South by Paul Theroux (Hamish Hamilton). After a lifetime of journeying, Theroux sets out for the southern states of the US that he has never before explored and discovers a new country as strange and as satisfying as any he has visited.

October

17 100th anniversary of birth of playwright of The Crucible and Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller: “It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves.”

FictionA Strangeness in my Mind by Orhan Pamuk (Faber). The ninth novel from the Nobel laureate conjures the changes in Turkish society over the last few decades from the point of view of an Istanbul street vendor.

Where My Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson). With a title taken from Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Faulks’s latest novel explores memory, desire and the madness of the 20th century.

Dictator by Robert Harris (Hutchinson). The final book in his trilogy about power-politics in ancient Rome.

PoetryThe Poems of TS Eliot edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue (Faber). An annotated edition of the complete poetry with commentary and textual history.

The Collected Poems and Drawings of Stevie Smith, edited by Will May (Faber). The illustrations and poems from Smith’s original volumes brought together for the first time

Non-fictionSPQR by Mary Beard (Profile). How did Rome go from unimportant village to a global superpower? Mary Beard investigates.

The Cabaret of Plants by Richard Mabey (Profile). The celebrated nature writer explores how plants work on our imagination.